Over the weekend I accompanied Susan to an Irish dancing competition in Emmitsburg Maryland, just south of the Pennsylvania border. She has been dancing for a couple of years, and this was her second competition. You might have thought that people just danced for fun, but humans being what they are, dancing is also a competitive sport, like ice skating. I had really intended to work through the weekend, but when push came to shove the lure of riding through autumn foothills to hear some fiddle playing and watch people dance jigs was simply too powerful.

I had never heard of Irish dancing until I saw it in the movie Backdraft, which was the also the first time I thought fire fighting looked kind of cool. Shades of things to come. Susan and I both possess authentic Irish last names and reasonably direct bloodlines, so I think in our respective pursuits we're doing our progenitors proud.

The feis (pronounced, I discovered, "fesh") was held at a small college. All ages compete at the event, and despite the best efforts of Michael Flatley, the dancers are mostly female. The scene inside the athletic center's large glass doors was chaotic, a swirl of brightly colored dressed embroidered with complex Celtic knots. I have never seen quite so much long tightly curled hair in one place in my life (competitors who lack long frizzy hair frequently don hairpieces with flowing locks sewn into them, which can lead to the disconcerting scene of a ten-year old detaching a major clump of her hair like a radiation victim.)

Like the rescue squad or most human endeavors, the Irish dance circuit is its own world, with ways that are a mysterious to outsiders. The hair is only the beginning; tradition proscribes and defines many elements of the dancers' look and style. Each school has its own costume and teaches its own variations on the traditional dances. There are smoldering rivalries between some long-standing schools. Videotaping is prohibited at a feis, Susan told me, because of fears that one school might try to steal another's steps.

Five separate plywood "stages" were set up around college's large basketball court, allowing different events to take place at the same time within feet of each other. Each stage had its own live music, usually a fiddler, filling the gym with a constant thrumming wail of Irish white noise. The bleachers and areas around the stages were packed with people in all types of traditional dance costumes, from the all black men's outfits to "solo competitor" costumes (designed by the dancer herself) that were painfully colorful.

Competitors lined up on the edge of the stage at the beginning of each event, then came out in twos to dance for the judge. To keep things moving along, there are always two people dancing for the single judge. Apparently there is a certain tolerance of cutthroat tactics between the two dancers. I watched as some dancers moved in toward the judge to block his or her view of the other competitor, or boxed the other dancer into a corner so s/he couldn't maneuver very well. Susan reports that the adults are usually pretty casual about these things but that some of the young people are out for blood and play hardball on the dance floor.

One thing I found interesting about the event was a certain abstinence from traditional Irish symbology, aside from the Celtic motifs on most dresses. The color green was only evident in moderation, and there was a pleasant absence of shamrocks and other Lucky Charms-style kitschy emerald-islandia.

I watched Susan dance her first event and then headed out to explore some of the surrounding countryside. She hadn't been feeling particularly confident in some of her upcoming events, but said I should come back in time for the group dances later that morning. Just down the road I from the college was the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial, on the campus of the national fire/rescue training center. I'd wondered what it was like and decided to visit it while I was in the vicinity.

The training center is now under tight security, with barricades and a couple guards checking IDs and searching cars. After an officer went through my stuff, I was permitted to walk onto the campus to the memorial. While I was glad that there was a memorial at all, it seemed like a shame that it was tucked away on a rural road behind jersey walls and a security checkpoint. Not to be petty, but police officers who were killed in the line of duty have a memorial in the heart of Washington DC.

And, although I hated to admit it, I wasn't particularly impressed with the memorial itself. The reputation of firefighters is not that they are deeply contemplative, but the memorial could have taken a shot at being a little more poetic. It didn't inspire thoughts of sacrifice or courage or fear or loss or family or any of the other things I that come to mind when I think about dying on the job.

The centerpiece was an eternal flame. I think this was an interesting choice and perhaps the only element of the memorial that I liked, simply because its presence was so troublesome. It evoked the odd love/hate relationship that so many rescuers have with fire (and, by extension, their mortality). Behind the flame, a stone obelisk was topped with the traditional Maltese Cross, and around this centerpiece were plaques with the names of firefighters who had died in previous years. It had all the elements of your usual commemorative memorial, but there was just something lacking. It was like a grave site -- sterile, uninviting.

Unfulfilled, I walked slowly back down the tree-sheltered main road of the training center, thinking about memorials. What is this urge to commemorate in stone and space? Why should I care about where a memorial sits or even if it exists at all? I don't want a grave or any marker when I die; it seems like a dumb waste of ground. Still, I had kind of wanted this memorial to matter to me.

I returned to the feis in time to see Susan compete in a two group dances. Overall, she placed in five different dances, including a first place in her jig. I was rather surprised that she didn't wear her gold medal for the entire weekend.